Phantasm
by AGENT Kuma-chan
Summary: The war wasn't supposed to follow him back. -John, Molly, Mrs. Hudson and the path of loss.


**Title:** Phantasm

**Fandom:** Sherlock Holmes, BBC

**Characters/Pairing:** John, Sherlock, Mrs. Hudson, Molly

**A/N:** So, this was my attempt at a grief fic. I think it's a bit rushed. :/

**Summary:** _The war wasn't supposed to follow him back. _

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...

...

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"I was alone before I met you."

-x-

Mrs. Hudson mumbles incoherently the entire ride back from the funeral. In half-thoughts, barely formed memories that she runs through like a book, she talks of the dead. "Oh, but he..."

She stops her words, her mind finishing out this sentence like the last fifty, and dabs her eyes again. There is a quiet sniffling that comes between each pause and if the car ride here was in silent shock, the one home is in broken understanding.

(Home. John tries not to think of that word.)

His hands dig into his knees as he sits ramrod straight, his head turned slightly toward the window. Outside he can see the small fields turn into buildings and he thinks Sherlock would hate living here. Too quiet, too ordinary, he would be bored before the day was out.

Something is slowly cracking inside him, something hurt and angry and he needs to get back before it hatches. This is unfair—he has made it past gunshots and dead companions, a war that kept him in a state of constant turmoil. John is no stranger to grief but that was there, in a war zone where death and life hang side by side.

Not in a city where you expect to be safe. And that was the real problem, wasn't it, the realization that war can occur everywhere.

The car stops and Mrs. Hudson stays there for second, her hand reaching over and squeezing his.

"Are you sure?"

He looks up, at the familiar door and number. Each room is probably still as he left it, covered in Sherlock's writing and experiments, his favourite pack of cigarettes hidden in a corner.

"I can't."

"Me neither," she whispers back, her eyes looking older, and he's reminded of how old she actually is. It's so easy to forget that sometimes. "Just visit me sometimes."

"I will."

They both know that might be a lie, but she smiles anyways and exits the cab.

-x-

The first night passed in bouts of awareness. He woke up on and off, his ears listening for the sound of a footstep or a door slamming shut. Even the sound of gunshots would be welcome now, the image of his friend shooting the wall almost enough to make him smile.

There was only silence waiting for him and that sound was scarier than anything he'd ever heard. It suffocated him, a presence that only grew larger with loss, and his eyes blinked open. The next hour was spent staring at the ceiling, listening to the hum of the refrigerator, and he tried not to think of the bodies inside.

Of the body outside, waiting to be buried.

It was two am now, the time Sherlock liked to play his violin, and John stumbled out of bed. Half-blind in the dark, he left the lights off as he moved from room to room. Each room was searched quickly in the moonlight, his hands groping for what his mind needed.

It was in the kitchen he found what he was looking for. Perched on top of the microwave was the deerstalker. A ridiculous hat, Sherlock had claimed, but he had worn it nearly everywhere. John's hands traced the brim before setting it on his head, tilting it slightly so he could see. It was loose and a little wet, most likely victim to one of Sherlock's experiments. He could still smell the gunpowder and nicotine from the times Sherlock managed to find his cigarettes.

He fell asleep with the hat on, his dreams full of red puddles and tall buildings.

-x-

"And now, I'm alone after you."

-x-

The stain is still there, dying the bricks a dark shade. John stands there a moment, oblivious to the crowd around him, and stares at the shades of grey. With the cordon removed, the street is a different place than it was a month ago. A crouch and he's able to see the lines in the rock, the small pebbles and cracks that make up an aging street.

Looking up, he can see the roof. The wind whistles around him and the ground feels cold beneath his fingers. It isn't very hard to imagine falling through the air, the rush of wind and gravity before a final impact. It's even easier to see the dribbling of blood, the pool of red that caked his head and the bruises that slowly marred his skin.

He presses his fingers against the stain once more. Sherlock had known instantly that his limp was imagined, a by-product of a battered mind.

This stain isn't much different. John stares at the spot and closes his eyes. Slowly, like he used to every time he opened the fridge and discovered a cadaver, he counts to ten and then looks down again.

He can still see it.

-x-

John still dreams at night. He dreams of ex-girlfriends and the smoky perfume of a gunshot. Some are nightmares and some are fantasies and this doesn't change after he moves into his new apartment.

It's the daydreams that are the problem, the moments between waking where he loses concentration. He sees the edges of purple lips and wisps of stained hair, a cooling hand in his. Then he'll focus on the present and he can't tell if the blue he saw was from dying eyes or the flowers blooming out the window.

-x-

In the pages of a calendar and the steady ticking of a clock, he marks the passage of time. It goes in months, years, minutes, in each sigh and blink of his eye. Each moment is crystalline. Each moment is a blur.

It's a day, a month, an hour before he tries to write up a post.

-x-

_Sherlock is dead. _

_-x-_

_Sherlock is de_

_-x-_

_Sherloc_

_-x-_

_Sherlock is not a_

He stops at the tenth one and calls it a day.

-x-

_I don't know why I'm writing this. I don't know why I need to—the therapist said it would help before and it never did. I don't even know why I go to her._

_I...Sherlock...he..._

-x-

He lies on his bed, staring at the ceiling fan. It moves slowly, its shadows long as they rotate on the white paint. If he squints, they blur into a moving blob of brown and black.

John inhales. Exhales. His chest rises and falls. In the distance he can hear a car alarm and the pedals of a bike. Someone is walking their dog outside and a bird thrills on the roof of the building. The fan continues to spin wildly, each blunt blade forming a point.

His eyes blink. He breathes and breathes and listens to the sound of the world moving on around him.

-x-

_Fake. Liar. Fraud. Cheat. Bogus. Phony. Sham. Con artist. _

_I think they're going to have to break open a thesaurus at this rate. The papers are running out of adjectives. _

-x-

"Hi, I'm Ian."

"I'm John Watson."

"Take a seat, please. Fortunately, we still have a position left. I see from your resume you have a lot of experience. You were in the military?"

"Yes, I served as an army doctor for approximately two years. I only returned to London a year or so ago and—"

"Wait, you're John Watson? The _Sherlock Holmes_ John Watson?"

"..."

"Sorry, but before we continue with the interview we need to confirm one thing. Did you kn—what are you doing? Don—wha—that's my mug you just broke. Get out—STOP!"

"..."

"..."

"Sir, your 9:00 just—sir? Are you okay?"

-x-

_Everyone thinks they know who he is. Everyone reads the newspaper articles and the blogs and watches the videos. They listen to the talk shows and argue with one another and scan the police reports._

_And somehow, everyone thinks they're an expert on who Sherlock is. Was. Like a person talking from across the country and has never met him knows exactly who he is-was. Like each article they read, each piece they hear gives them all they need to know._

_They should try living with him. _

_As if those papers could even sum him up in a word or two. I've tried. Arrogant git was the closest I got._

-x-

"Are you John Watson?"

He stares at the man through the open door, nodding slowly as he looks down at the box at his feet. It's heavy and unlabeled and he can't think of the effort it must have taken to find him.

Even John doesn't know where he's staying these days.

"Hello?"

"Ah, yes," he replies quickly, taking the clipboard and signing it. The company's name looks unfamiliar and he can't remember shopping online recently.

He can't really remember much recently. As he closes the door behind the man, he stares at the cardboard. There's another name plastered on it and that's a name he can recognize—a publisher he used to buy medical books from.

"What have we got here?" John muses before cutting open the box. Bubble wrap and white Styrofoam fall out as he opens the flaps and his hands stop as he uncovers the first title.

_Our Universe_.

And another, _A guide to astrology._ And another, _Deep into the unknown._

_The Vacuum of Space. Stars and us. Aliens? Quasars and other perils. _

It was a gag gift for Sherlock. Crouching in front of the box, he stops shifting through the tomes and closes the flaps once more. The first book still sits on the floor beside him, and he picks it up.

Inside he finds a note he had added with the delivery—finds words about paintings and attics and how maybe a little more common knowledge would help with cases.

"I was going to order the Earth set too." John can feel his voice cracking before it does, the dam he was holding back flooding past the gates.

For the first time in a long time, he sits there and cries.

-x-

_How could they know him? I barely knew him myself. I barely knew him and he knew everything about me and how..._

_I know death. I knew death. And somehow it still shocks me every time._

-x-

"Molly!"

Her head snaps back quickly, her ponytail whipping behind her. Searching through the crowd behind her, she smiles when she spots him. The milling crowd slowly parts as he makes his way to her and he comes to a stop in front of her. "John."

Looking at her now, he doesn't know where to start or what to say. "How are you?" he blunders in and winces at the banality of the statement.

"Uh...well, I guess," she swallows and mixes words at the question, her tired eyes and faint smile answering for her. "I'm okay. Mostly. You?"

"Better." Anything else would be a lie. "On your way to work?"

"Um, no. I'm having my, well, my lunch break. Do you need to...?" She doesn't finish the sentence, doesn't need to for him to understand. If he looks up he could make out the windows to the room he used to know all too well, the microscope probably still standing on that last specimen.

"No, I'd rather not." Even the hospital is a little too much for him right now. "Can I join you? I'd like to..."

"Know everything?" she guesses and he remembers that she must have autopsied the corpse.

"Catch up," he responds instead and the smile she gives at that is brighter than he remembers.

-x-

_I think in those last moments, in those last seconds, I knew him perfectly well. There were no walls, no pretenses. I couldn't see him, just that goddamned hand. _

_But his voice..._

-x-

"The bullets were easy to cover up, I hope." John puts down his teacup, his tongue burning slightly.

Mrs. Hudson snorts at that, crinkling her eyebrows as she frowns at the reminder. "Heavens no. I had to tear down the wallpaper and find someone to fill in the holes. And hide the burns."

"Burns?" John stares at his old landlady, incredulous at this new fact. "He burned our walls?"

"Well, it might have been from that explosion a while back." Mrs. Hudson breathes in the thin wafers that rise from her cup before taking a sip. Her back remains straight but relaxed and she gives him a smile as she lowers the cup. "I do have a lot of people wanting to live there."

"Considering the previous tenants? You should be happy it isn't the other way around."

"They'll have to wait either way—I still have to finish cleaning his room." She stops there, absently picking up a small spoon and stirring her tea. "Do you think you can come back yet?"

John knows she means permanently and hopes temporarily. Neither of those answers are one he can give just yet. "Later, maybe." The half-promise sounds less like a lie this time and he reaches across to grasp her thin knuckles, the lines of age soft beneath his fingers.

"I want to do this again soon."

At those words she laughs, her other hand reaching over to cover his. "It's good to remember sometimes, isn't it?"

-x-

He deletes his saved entries, each an attempt to understand loss. Some justified what Sherlock did and others refuted the false claim and each was John's attempt to find the truth of that day.

(And this John knows—he will never stop dreaming of that moment and wondering what went wrong. What he could have done to change it.)

It all boils down to a simple truth and it is all he needs to know.

John writes his last post and closes the blog. There is nothing left to say.

-x-

_He was my best friend and I will always believe in him._


End file.
